PARTYNEXTDOOR: Infinity World Tour – London

On the heels of his fourth EP, Seven Days, released back in late September 2017, Canadian R&B singer/songwriter PARTYNEXTDOOR announced a highly anticipated European leg of his Infinity World Tour.

London’s o2 Academy Brixton was the third stop of a thirteen-date tour that sees PARTY, and budding R&B support act, Toronto-based Jessie Reyez, begin in Dublin, before heading across the UK, Germany and ending in Stockholm 1st March.

After neat acoustic covers of Coco Butter Kisses and Schoolboy Q’s That Part, the melodic wails, upheld with a rooted soul, of Jessie Reyez and her cuts of her debut 2017 EP, Kiddo, the iconic Brixton Academy steadily brimmed to just shy of 5,000. Wrapping with her, socially pertinent Gatekeepers, she strolls off stage leaving the crowd eagerly awaiting the arrival of PARTYNEXTDOOR.

His casual arrival on stage just after 9.30 was greeted with a frenzy of screams and a sea of snapchat lights as he broke into a 3 part live-band performance of 2014 self-produced hit, Recognize, as the stage was lit with yellow and red lights. A rumbling drum solo rolled into an abrupt ending to the song, stomping the arrival of the OVO artist to London.

Followed by a quick welcome, PARTY rolled straight into 2013’s Break From Toronto, before continuing a constant barrage of hits and project cuts from the 24-year old’s already impressive catalogue. Party’s most recent 2017 effort, Seven Days, received rave reviews from critics across the music spectrum, an EP which features both multi-award-winning US stars Hasley and Hip Hop icon, Rick Ross. It was later revealed that the whole project was done in seven days, hence, the concept title, something PARTY detailed in his Beats 1 interview with Zane Lowe earlier last year.

The project quickly became the focus point of the evening as PARTY dove into Never Played Me, with a soul-vibrating bass and melodious light keyboard tones jumping out of the speakers, before breezily running through a few more seminal tracks from With You, off Drake’s More Life playlist, to Preach, which faded out on soft melancholic vibes before the lights cut out.

The response the packed out venue gave was incomparable to the previous 50 minutes so to that which was received by PARTY when the first beats of Wild Thoughts and Work brought about, the latter which PARTY infamously penned for global superstar Rhianna. Almost there however, was the closing track, Damage, featuring Hasley from Seven Days.

As part of a new wave of Canadian artists coming through, PARTYNEXTDOOR is the epitome of the evolution of sounds and cultures blending to eventually ooze out soulful, harmonic, yet deeply entrenched music, transcending boundaries across the globe. The vibes are undeniable, and so is the journey for this young artist, who’s 2018 project is slated to be one of the best yet.